Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with image

I just know this is possible...

nokry56 — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:58:19 -0800

How do I take an image file and mount it as a CD drive on my Mac (Snow Leopard) without using Toast. Bonus points for doing it from the command line. I have a dmg file of Age of Empires III and am really tired of carrying around the CD in my backpack. Plus it just frustrates me, because I know this has got to be possible without using Toast.

For those of you who are confused, I don't want it to mount like a Mac normally mounts a .dmg - I want it to mount as if it is a CD. Toast does this, but if I could do it from the command line then I could set up a script that first mounts the dmg as a CD then runs the app!

It can be done on Windows, surely it can be done on a Mac. I just can't find any good virtual drive software for the Mac and Google is utterly failing me.

chop shop

nihlton — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:11:52 -0800

this should be pretty simple - Ive got a HUGE image (72" x 96") and want to print it. Thats going to be REAL expensive to print as one piece so i was hoping to find some software that would chop it into many 8x10" pieces that I can then print in a standard printer. Suggestions? I am aware of rasterbator, but that converts the image into half-tone pattern which Id like to avoid. Ive got a lot of detail id like to preserve.

How can I convert Microsoft Image Composer files into a usable format?

Lazlo — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 13:33:56 -0800

I have a bunch of old Microsoft Image Composer (.mic) files. Nothing in my current toolkit can handle the format. How can I view them and/or convert them to something useful? Google consensus seems to be I should torrent a copy of Image Composer -- which used to come with FrontPage, IIRC -- but I'd rather not risk downloading a trojan. I'm running Windows.

Thanks!

Is it ok to call out skinny girls for calling themselves fat?

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:00:59 -0800

Should I recognize that all women have body image issues, or do I have a point in feeling annoyed that someone a lot smaller than me is describing herself as "curvy"? I was having a conversation with a friend of mine and she mentioned something about having to come to terms with the fact that she was "curvy". By curvy, she meant (her words) that she occupied an awkward space where she wasn't fat and she wasn't skinny - a weird middle ground of not belonging. While is indeed very shapely, she's actually quite petite, has a very small waist, and I suspect that at least 90% of people asked would describe her as thin.

I, on the other hand, am 5'8 and 185lbs (when I tell people this, they usually make a face and say 'That can't be right'), and well-proportioned but nevertheless substantial figure. I was a fat kid in elementary school, and have my whole life probably been at least 10lbs overweight. While I'm quite comfortable with my body, I do struggle with body image, and all the negative feelings that come with being a big girl.

My immediate (reflexive) reaction to her statement was, "You're not curvy," to which she took offense. She does work in an industry where body image comes into play in a way that it never has for me, and I realize that I shouldn't discount someone's insecurities because of my own anxiety. Women, whether size 0 or 24, all experience discomfort with their bodies at times.

At the same time, I can't help but feel that she really doesn't occupy the space between fat and thin, whereas I have for my whole life. I feel by identifying as such, she a) has some unrealistic ideas about her body, and b) is attaching herself to an identity she hasn't really experienced.

So tell me, am I just being insecure and competitive unnecessarily, or do I have a point? I'm not saying that she doesn't have reason to have her own insecurities, and I'm not trying to be part of an exclusive club, but I feel a bit like she doesn't really know what she's talking about. Even if I'm out of line, I'd love to hear from women who react the same way as I did.

Mystery comic/zine image.

Bdave — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 21:07:11 -0800

Can anyone identify this image? Found taped to a pole near my friend's house in Carlton, Melbourne, Australia. Many reverse image lookups tried and failed. It seems very familiar but I can't put my finger on it. I thought it may be some wacky 80's comic, have searched to no avail. Thanks.

Help me put my best e-foot forward

Jezztek — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:20:36 -0800

Facebook brutally compresses my images, anything I can do to minimize it? Howdy all,

I'm finally getting around to making a Facebook page for my t-shirt designs, but I have bumped into a problem:

I'm trying to upload images of my designs, which tent to feature large flat areas of solid color. Facebook's compression algorithm mangles some of these solid colored areas them pretty brutally. Example, check out the red in this image:

upload_compare.png

Are there any tricks out there to minimize this problem? Formats, modes, resolutions to save in that might help things? Adding subtle noise, or other tricks to force the algorithm to work a little harder? Alternative means of uploading that don't get the usual treatment? any tricks would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks much!

USB key-friendly photo viewer for Windows /w tagging?

onshi — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 13:04:36 -0800

Can you recommend a lightweight, USB key-friendly photo viewer software for Windows that supports tagging? If Cornice Portable supported tags (or was still under development) that would be perfect, as I use PortableApps on my thumb drive. Ideas/suggestions?

Naming convention for image files?

pleasantries — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 10:54:30 -0800

links to standards to naming scans (tiffs and jpgs) of slide images for artist's work? I about to start an extensive slide scanning project and I want examples of naming conventions used at other institutions. The name of each jpeg should include artist's name and the date of artwork.

Looking for picture of chain-saw carved bear for tattoo reference - hard to find

bkdelong — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:54:00 -0800

Looking for a picture/drawing of a bear statue from behind (possibly facing forward) - from what I recall, it looked like a chainsaw-cut carving of a brown or black bear out of a tree. Could be B&W lineart of one and I recall the grooves of the "fur flaps" being very deep but symmetrical - not rough-cut and not rounded. Thinking of using it along with a drawn "cub" of similar look & feel for a tattoo. Any help is welcome...looking for reference pics. Everything I find is too cartoony, small, smooth, rough etc. This image projected a feeling of native origin but most native totems of bears look far different. It was almost like someone took an oak, cut off the top about 12-15 ft up, created pointed ears and cut deep, wide grooves to resemble bear fur. The reason I think it was B&W lineart is because I recall a white background. It could very well be a sculpture or another animal.

High fidelity DVD ripping

sloe — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:28:33 -0800

High fidelity DVD ripping: collecting short videos from separate DVDs without losing any quality Hello

I have a bunch of short movies on separate DVDs that need to be strung together without losing any quality. This is for a screening so, if it is possible, preserving the image fidelity is important. Also note that these are independent artists so there are no copyright/encryption concerns here. I was thinking of a couple of different ways of tackling this and I was wondering if anyone with experience could let me know which is most likely to succeed and suggest software to accomplish this. Different solutions:

I) Rip the DVDs uncompressed to laptop hard-drive and play from there

My concern here is that the uncompressed DVD video will be gigantic and I don't know if the laptop graphics card can handle the data rate (I don't have the specs handy - it's not mine that will be used - it's about 1 year old and mid-range quality). Will the laptop play them back smoothly? What software would you recommend for lossless rips?

II) Rip the DVDs to a hard-drive, burn a new DVD containing all of them

This will work - but will there be quality loss in the uncompression/recompression? Any tricks for eliminating/reducing the quality loss?

III) Copy the video data directly

I don't know if this can be done, but it'd be great to just grab the raw DVD data, copy to the hard-drive, and burn it to a disk containing all of them - either to play consecutively or with a menu (the entire image as an iso won't be useful as it's not just a copy of a single disk I need to make). If this can be done, what software does it?

Thanks for any help in advance.

Most iconic images of a farm?

tnygard — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 06:24:18 -0800

What do you think the most iconic images of a farm are the twenty first century?

What do cool kids' backpacks look like these days?

cider — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 04:34:34 -0800

If you have kids between the ages of 7-12 (or know kids in that age range), do they use a backpack, and what sort of backpack do they use? If you could point me to images of similar backpacks online, that would be especially helpful. (This is for a book illustration -- I don't want anything that will be hopelessly outdated or dorky, and I have no idea what the kids are carrying these days.)

Governator in Better Days

benzenedream — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 15:02:16 -0800

I'm looking for a B&W 70s picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger in a tuxedo with a large buck-toothed grin and bad hair backstage after winning an award (for, I assume, Stay Hungry in 1977). I found this on a postcard years ago and stupidly didn't scan it before sending. I'd like to use this image in some craft projects.

Royalty free images for someone else's personal use

like_neon — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 04:09:27 -0800

How to correctly use royalty free images for personal items when I'm using them to design something for someone else, who pays me for my time. So I'm designing my own Save the Date cards and have been using some royalty free images in them (which I will then print using Vista Print). Since they are for personal use my understanding is that I'm pretty much in the clear, whether they are free royalty-free images or something I bought from iStock. (Please correct me if I'm wrong though before I print these suckers.)

I'm wondering, what if I design cards for someone else and they pay me? I wouldn't sell them cards, just the time spent on the design and the file, which they then print from wherever they want. This would be only for personal use designs (such as the save the date card) and not for resale.

In this scenario:

1) Could I still keep using the free royalty free images, for free?
2) Are images bought from iStock still covered by the Standard license?

Or would my "client" have to pay me in cake to make it ok?

Perhaps these are all quite obviously laid out because to me it sounds like this is just what designers do, but I can't seem to get past the legal mumbo jumbo and I just want to know what the deal is.

I have tried looking online for a company that does this but they all make you buy the cards from them too, even Etsy. Do you know anyone who offers "design only" services for this type of thing? (ie limited run, non sale items, for individual customers and not like, say, a business.)

Cute Seagull?

47triple2 — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 20:50:40 -0800

I need the cutest seagull picture ever. My sister took a picture of "a really cute seagull" and I need to prove that there is a picture as cute as that one (if not cuter) online. I don't have the original photo though. :(

Create Win2K network install image?

mcarthey — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 19:43:11 -0800

How to simply create an install image for Win2K and place it on the network for another computer to install from? I'm looking for a quick and dirty guide, or even a quick application to step me through the process of taking the Win2K installation CD and putting it onto the network to be installed onto a laptop that does not have a CD drive.
I have found too much information to be useful and all assume an administrator's level of experience or a corporate environment that I'm pushing service packs or the like.
Can someone simplify this for me?!

Thanks!

Dissecting the Photoshop "stamp" filter

BugsPotter — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 09:34:30 -0800

I'd like to programmatically recreate the Photoshop stamp filter - does anyone know how to dissect what the stamp filter is doing? The Photoshop settings I'm using with the Stamp filter are: Light/Dark Balance set to 25 and Smoothness set to 5. I'd like to be able to recreate this effect without using Photoshop, but I'm not really sure what's going on under the hood. Any thoughts or pointers would be much appreciated. Thanks!!

I'd pay like a million dollars for a simple pair of black shoes

mippy — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:22:35 -0800

I'm 27 and feel like I dress like a teenager. How can I update my look whilst retaining quirkiness and personality? Background: I'm in the UK, I work in a casual office. My old job - also casual - had quite a scruffy intake, but now I've moved into advertising I'm surrounded by People Who Make An Effort and I'm beginning to feel like the dowdy kid sister. Usually I wear jeans, a T-shirt and trainers to work, with the odd bit of kitsch jewellery...I started carrying a handbag a few years ago and I still can't think of it as a 'handbag' as surely this is what grown-ups have?

I'm tall and quite curvy, which rules out a lot of the clothes in the shops from time to time (I'm talking waaay too much cleavage, or things fitting everywhere but around the bust) which is very frustrating, particularly when shopping for vintage, and which makes em glad I don't work somewhere that involves suiting. I also have issue with heels as I have UKsize9 feet that are pretty tender. But I'm starting to feel unkempt and like I've let myself go a bit. I suffer with bipolar disorder and I'm trying to think of ways to help with the depression, and the shallow truth is that when I look pretty, I feel a bit better.

I don't want to go out and buy many new clothes - I have too many clothes as it is. I plan to get a haircut (I only get it cut once every so often - it's straight and flat and allergic to styling products) and, longer-term, lose a little weight. I have new glasses (Rayban tortoise-shell frames) which - call me sad if you like - makes me even more inclined to shift the rest of my appearance. I wear make-up, and try and experiment with new things so I don't wear the same stuff I did at sixteen, yet my wardrobe is stuck in my early twenties. I don't want to be a clone of the people I see around me or in meetings, and I don't want to simply take what the high-street is pushing this year. I want to still look like me, just a more put-together, more grown-up me. And I'm not sure of the ethics or usefulness of getting rid of half my stuff in order to find a coherent style. Any experiences or advice?

Photoshop help required

ninazer0 — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:18:03 -0800

Photoshop question. I have a logo. I have a banner. I want to cut the shape of the logo out of the banner to leave a logo-shaped hole so you can see the page background. When I paste the logo on the banner it goes all pixelly. It's a big logo (2000 pixels square roughly) and the background is 720 by 130. Obviously there needs to be rescaling. When I do it, I am left with a rough, pixillated edge that looks like shit.

I *think* I need to turn the logo into a vector shape so that it scales properly. I've no idea how to do this.

I *assume* that this is also partially a question of resolution.

Can someone hold my hand and explain this to me?

I have CS3 but I mostly use it to retouch the occasional photo.

CSS / Lightbox-esque popup/div width issue.

theRussian — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:43:14 -0800

Scaling down div width to fit around image which has been scaled down via its height element?? Hello!

I have a simple lightbox type popup on my site, with an opaque overlay and a content "whitebox". Upon clicking a thumbnail, the popup/overlay divs are made visible and an img tag is placed into the popup (into a div named popup-img, there's another div which holds the close button in the popup). I have scaled the image height to fit into the popup, which takes up 75% of the screen. So, recap: popup height = 75%; popup-img div height = 100%, and the height of the img tag itself is also set to 100%. The problem I am facing, in FF and IE (not Safari, though) is that the width popup-img div (into which the img tag is written via JS) is staying the width of the original width of the image - not the new scaled width (scaled due to scaling down the height).

Is there anyway to get the width of the popup div to fit to the new width of the image? This isn't so much of a problem when the original image height is greater than will fit in the box, and scaled, but when the image height is smaller, it gets scaled 'up', but the width of the pop-up stays to fit the original width, and the image goes outside of the popup width-wise.

Sorry if this is a confusing explination - it is confusing to me as well.

Other posibly helpful/hurtful info - the other div inside the popup is the close button - which is floated to the top right. What I would like to happen, ideally - is for the image to be on the left, and the close button on the right, with whitespace under the button. Don't know if there's anyway that working with this element will help.

I can provide more clarification, and possibly a link to the code in question, if someone is interested in helping me out :D

Thanks ahead of time!!

Where is this image from?

juv3nal — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:12:32 -0800

So I have this desktop wallpaper image (filefront, apologies: largish). Where is it from/who is the artist? I have this vague sense that it was used as promo art for the game Rez or Rez HD, but I'm apparently not very good at using google today.

Seeking image which illustrates the point, you need the full picture before deciding.

therubettes — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 07:16:35 -0800

Can you help me to find an image or series of images which when revealed section by section or one by one suggest different things about a single situation? Like the old UK show Catchphrase I need an image which is initially covered and split into say 4 or 6 pieces. Each section is revealed bit by bit. Each reveal throws some new light on the situtation. It is not until the final section is revealed that the whole thing makes sense. I hope the question has made sense. It is for a powerpoint presentation. I just need a single image, nothing offensive, or too grave either thanks. Perhaps it will be a series of images of the same thing each giving more information that the last.

Basically the point I am trying to illustrate is you need to have the full picture before making a decision. Part of the picture is no use!

Thanks in advance. Not sure about the category put it into computers and internet!

Viewing very large images on a WM6 phone?

Jonathan Harford — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 07:59:49 -0800

How do I deal with a very large image (a map, actually) on my Windows Mobile 6 phone? I would love to be able to look at an NYC MTA map while underground (on the NYC MTA, naturally). But the picture viewer on my XV6900 complains about RAM (or is too slow to be useful) when I view my map JPG (or PNG, tried that too) at full resolution. Other imageviewers seem to have a similar problem. XnView has no memory or speed problems, but has a tendency to pixelate the map when viewed full-size.

Are there any (free/cheap) applications suitable for this task?

Why won't my in-line Word images stay put?

Breav — Tue, 26 May 2009 16:34:34 -0800

I am a very frequent user of MS-Word, right now Word 2003. I routinely drop pictures into text documents, selecting the layout option "in line with text". I have inherited a document with wonky picture behavior, where putting a picture in-line makes most or all of it disappear. The document originator seems to have temporarily solved by floating all of the pictures over loads of paragraph marks, which is un-elegant and will not please my learned client. My mad Google skills have failed me for an explanation. I have tried everything from monkeying with the advanced layout (Picture Position) settings to lowering the acceleration on my graphics card, all to no avail. (Virtually) all suggestions will be cheerfully tried.

Looking for image of whiteboard with specific text on it...

psychotic_venom — Tue, 26 May 2009 11:51:31 -0800

Looking for a picture of a whiteboard... drawn on the left hand side has stuff like "check e-mail only at ... 10... 2... 4" an "max of 3 open projects" and "home by 5:30... NO EXCUSES" couldn't find with google.